Help Cancer Patients Find Bone Marrow Donors!

We have some exciting news to share! The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has generously provided $500,000 in matching funds for #GivingTuesday!  Today people around the world celebrate and support their favorite causes, and we hope you join #GivingTuesday and show your support for patients with cancer!     

Today there will be an unprecedented 50% matching for #GivingTuesday donations up to the first $1 million raised!  The bonus will be added to all donations of up to $1,000 per unique donor, but only until the funds last.  Make sure to make your donation early to get that bonus!

In addition to this huge matching opportunity, all new recurring donations made from today through December 31st will be matched at 200% up to $100, on the 4th donation!  

Any way you choose to participate will be a great help for patients in St. Petersburg who await bone marrow transplants.  The donor registry in Russia is still too small to provide matching donors for every patient, so the majority of donors are found abroad, especially in Germany. 

Sergei is one of the patients who urgently need help.  Last summer, after finishing the 3rd year of Transportation college in Tambov, Russia, Sergei suddenly got fever and developed chest pains.  When a blood test reurned abnormal, Sergei was diagnosed with acute leukemia.  He now needs to undergo bone marrow transplant to reach sustained remission.  As his younger sister was not a good match, he needs to find an unrelated donor.  Sergei is only 19, but he is an optimist and a fighter and ready to do anything to overcome his disease. 

Thank you for your kindness and support for patients like Sergei!  Together, we are making a real difference for patients with blood cancers! 

In our last report we asked for support for Anton - and you delivered!   After the last Bonus Day we were able to transfer 4,000 euros for his donor search in German registry.  Once a matching donor was found, Anton was scheduled for transplantation - and it took place last week!  He is now recovering and feeling better every day.  Thanks to your generous support, Anton has a real chance to beat leukemia and resume his life with his young family.

Another Bonus Day is coming up soon - on Wednesday, September 21.  This is the last Bonus Day of the year, and GlobalGiving will donate $60,000 in funds that will be applied as 30% bonus.  The $60,000 available in matching funds will be divided into two equal pots of $30,000 each, which will be available as matching funds beginning at 06:00 am EDT (13:00 Moscow time) and 12:00 pm EDT (19:00 Moscow time) respectively. Please mark the day and make sure to donate at bonus release times!  All donations of up to $1,000 are eligible for a bonus, but only while the funds last. 

The funds raised during Bonus Day will be used to help patients like Roman. He is a 21-year-old Architecture student from Bashkortostan region. He had high hopes and aspiration for his budding career, but after just one year of college he started feeling unwell. Constant fatigue, lack of appetite and joint pains were exhausting, and eventually Roman went to see a physician. However, his doctor only referred him to have a blood test and diagnosed him with gastrointestinal problems. After two months of therapy and no improvement, Roman returned, but received a new prescription for gastrointestinal medicine.

Luckily, Roman had a cousin who worked as a lab technician and was concerned about his blood work. She suggested that Roman saw a hematologist instead, and soon after Roman was diagnosed with leukemia. He had to undergo grueling treatment that took 18 months to achieve remission. Roman was hoping that the worst was behind him, but just six months later he had a relapse.

By now, he has gone through more chemotherapy and is currently in remission again. But to ensure that he stays in remission, Roman needs to undergo bone marrow transplant from an unrelated donor, as his sister was not a good match. A donor can be located in German registry, but the search for a donor and harvest of the stem cells are costly and unaffordable for Roman. I hope you will join us during the Bonus Day or become a recurring donor to help Roman and other patients who need our help.

Thank you!

During the last GlobalGiving Bonus Day, we raised $2,964, including a 36.91% bonus. Thank you everyone! As we've said earlier, your kind help has allowed us to initiate the donor bone marrow search for Irina from Tolyatti in Central Russia. In the meantime, the donor for her has been found! Irina feels better than before, and the transplantation is due to be scheduled presently.

The next Bonus Day is just around the corner - it will take place on Wednesday, June 15, from 9 am Eastern time, or 4 pm Moscow time, and will last until funds run out (or till 23:59 Eastern time, which is 06:59 Moscow time). The good news is that this time we are eligible for a 50% match from Global Giving as Superstars! $110,000 will be available in matching funds. In addition, two $1,000 bonus prizes will be awarded to the projects who have the highest number of donors and raise the most funds.

This Bonus Day we will be fundraising for Anton, a software engineer from St. Petersburg. He started feeling unwell in late 2015 and was diagnosed with M2 acute myeloblastic leukemia in mid-January 2016. He has since undergone four chemotherapy cycles, but his doctors say he will definitely need bone marrow transplantation. Unfortunately, he only has matches in the international registry, which means that he has to find 18,000 euros to recover. Anton is married and has an infant son who he hopes he will be able to raise.

If you'd like to help Anton on June 15, here are a couple of rules to keep in mind:

• Only donations made online are eligible for matching. This includes donations made by credit/debit card, PayPal, and GlobalGiving gift card.
• Donations of up to $1,000 per individual donor will be matched while funds remain from the $110,000 on GlobalGiving.org. Once the $110,000 in matching funds runs out, donations will no longer be matched.

As usual, thank you so much for your support!

We’ve had a great Bonus Day! With your help, we were able to transfer 5,000 euros to Stephan Morsch registry to initiate the donor search for Irina. Irina is a patient from Central Russia, who worked as a hospital nurse for nearly 25 years. In 2005, Irina was diagnosed with essential thrombocythopenia; ten years on, she consulted R. Gorbacheva Institute of Hematology and Transplantation in St. Petersburg due to disease progression and learned that she'd need bone marrow transplantation to recover. The donor search alone would have cost Irina and her family 18,000 euros - but thanks to your support, this amount is now 5,000 euros smaller. Irina sends her thanks to everyone who helped her in this difficult time. She is due to resume treatment on May 10.

If you want to help more patients like Irina, we would like to share a story of Inessa with you. Inessa lives in Ufa, a city on the Volga. She began feeling unwell in 2006, but it took her doctors a long time to find out what was wrong with her. Their final diagnosis was aplastic anemia. Unfortunately, last year Inessa's daughter was taken ill too, and she is still recovering after a serious fracture. Inessa's husband is disabled due to ill health. Despite all this, Inessa remains an optimist and says: "If you help someone from the heart and do not count on a favor in return, someday you'll get happiness that you've never even dreamed of!"

At present, St. Petersburg specialists are saying that Inessa needs bone marrow transplantation to get well. This means she will have to raise 18,000 euros on her own, as a foreign donor search is not covered by Russia’s state healthcare program and she only has donor matches in German registry. Inessa and her family would be very grateful for any support.

Many thanks once again – your help is invaluable and highly appreciated. May the month of May be merry for all of you!

Thank you so much for your support for our patients last year!  Our joint efforts helped us to contribute to the costs of bone marrow donor searches for 10 blood cancer patients.  They are children and adults, students and teachers who traveled to St. Petereburg from across Russia for bone marrow transplantations from unrelated donors, their last chances to beat cancer.   You can read some of the stories in our previous reports. 

Last year, Russian bone marrow donor registry had finally registered a significant number of donors - and it helped find matching donors for 19 lucky patients.  At the same time, collapse of the ruble led to more than doubling of the cost of searches abroad, and fewer patients can now afford it.  Our partner, Advita fund in St. Petersburg, had helped find donors for 99 patients last year. 

This year will not be any easier, and we hope that we can count on your continuing support. With February 14th around the corner, would you pick one of the patients as your Valentine?  Maybe you could consider Vyacheslav, a young man from Krasnoyarsk studying to become a civil engineer.  Since 2014 Slava has been suffering from lymphoma and undergoing numerous chemotherapy cycles, but his disease continued to progress.  Recently, he received therapy with a new drug that helped him control lymphoma, but he now needs bone marrow transplant from a donor to keep it from coming back again.  And he needs our help to make it happen. 

Thanks again for your kindness, and have a very happy Valentine's day!

Links:

• Patient list on Advita Fund website